Lili Elbe

Lili Ilse Elvenes, better known as Lili Elbe , was a Danish transgender woman and one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery. Elbe was born Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener and was a successful painter under that name. She also presented as Lili and was publicly introduced as Einars sister. After successfully transitioning in 1930, she made a legal name change to Lili Ilse Elvenes and stopped painting altogether. The name Lili Elbe was made up by Copenhagen journalist Louise Loulou Lassen. Lili died from complications involving a uterus transplant.

Lili was not the first transgender woman nor the first to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Dora RichterDrchen R., born as Rudolph Richter , who even early on in childhood displayed a tendency to act and carry on in a feminine way, was castrated at her own request in 1922, when Magnus Hirschfeld arranged for a bilateral orchidectomy for her and began investigating the impact that reduced testosterone had on her anatomy. She worked as a domestic at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Research, dressed as a woman. Hirschfeld affectionately called her Drchen and published her transformation process as a trans woman in his work on gender studies Geschlechtskunde. Institute physician Felix Abraham, published Dorchens gender transformation as casestudy Her castration had the effect albeit not very extensive of making her body became fuller, restricting her beard growth, making visible the first signs of breast development, and giving the pelvic fat pad... a more feminine shape.

Source: Wikipedia